James Polk Essay Research Paper James Polk

James Polk Essay, Research Paper

James Polk: Young Hickory and Dark-Horse Polk was born on a farm in Mecklenburg county, N. C., on Nov. 2, 1795, the oldest of the ten children of Samuel and Jane Knox Polk. The Polks had moved from Pennsylvania a generation earlier, among the first pioneer settlers in that part of North Carolina. James’ great-uncle, Thomas Polk, was the most prominent leader in the community. His maternal grandfather, James Knox, was a farmer and a blacksmith who had distinguished himself in the Continental Army during the American Revolutionary War. Through his great-uncle Thomas Polk, Polk’s father had benefitted from vast land speculations by which political insiders in North Carolina obtained claims on most of the good lands in what became the state of Tennessee.[1] In 1806, Polk’s family moved to some of these lands on the Tennessee frontier, settling near the new town of Columbia in what later became Maury County. James Polk, at this time, developed severe gallstones that were surgically removed in a risky procedure then. Without the benefit of modern technology, sterilization, or anesthesia, the celebrated Kentucky surgeon Dr. Ephraim McDowell operated on him successfully removing the gallstones. He returned healthy that brought a rush of energy and ambition.[2] This rush entices Polk to enrolled at a nearby Presbyterian academy for a year in Columbia and another year at a more renowned educational institution at Murfreesboro. At the age of twenty, he successfully passed the entrance requirements for the second-year class of the University of North Carolina. He was “correct, punctual, and industrious,” and as a graduating senior in 1818 he was the Latin salutatorian of his class–the preeminent scholar in both the classics and mathematics. After graduation he returned to Tennessee and began to practice law in Nashville. His interest in politics, which had fascinated him even as a young boy, was encouraged by his association with the prominent criminal lawyer, Felix Grundy. The Panic of 1819 plunged the state into unprecedented economic distress while Polk was in Nashville. As people cried out for relief from the hard times, a new style of politics developed, with Grundy emerging as the prototype of the politician who rises to power by championing, or seeming to champion, the cause of the distressed. Polk began to learned politics as well as law, like an apprentice, from Grundy.[3] Because he was a confirmed Democrat, an unfailing supporter of Andrew Jackson, and his style of political oratory became so popular characterized as the “Napoleon of the stump,” his political career was assured. Grundy, in 1819, helped Polk secure the clerkship in the state Senate. Meanwhile, having been admitted to the bar in 1820, he had been practicing law in Nashville and Columbia. Polk attained his first political post in 1823, winning election to the Tennessee House of Representatives.[4] His wife furthered his rapid rise to political power, Sara Childress Polk, whom he married Jan. 1, 1824, while serving in the state house of representatives from 1823-1825.(Smith) They had no children. The social prominence of her family and her personal charm were distinct assets for a politically ambitious lawyer. As an official hostess she won the admiration and esteem of the leading figures of the day, and for twenty-five years she was her husband’s close companion in state and national politics. As a member of the legislature Polk took sides against the previously dominant faction of Tennessee politicians with whom his family had been allied. Supporting the policies of the popular reforming governor William Carroll, he emerged, despite his youth, as the legislative leader of the opponents of the land speculators and the bankers. Nevertheless, he broke with Carroll to support the presidential ambitions of Tennessee’s even more popular military hero, Gen. Andrew Jackson, a longtime friend of the Polk family.(Smith) This was easier because Jackson, too, had come to question the land speculations and banking activities of his former political associates. In 1825, Polk entered the U.S. House of Representatives. He held his seat in Congress for fourteen years with only occasional challenges. Jackson recieved more votes than any of the three candidates in the 1824 Presidential Election, but he did not win majority electoral votes, allowing the House of Representatives to choose John Quincy Adams as president.[5] Polk went to Washington with the paramount purpose of helping Jackson win the 1828 presidency. By Jackson increasely trusting Polk, the young congressman played a large part in the four-year campaign that finally installed Jackson in the White House in 1829 as President of the United States.[6] During Jackson’s first term his prot g , “Young Hickory” Polk became a prominent administration spokesman in the House against internal-improvement projects and for tariff reduction. Polk’s Jeffersonian ideology of states’ rights and limited government made him originally sympathetic to the doctrine of nullification that John C. Calhoun developed to oppose high protective tariffs. But when Jackson broke with Calhoun, Polk pulled back in time to retain the president’s confidence. Polk’s chance, however, for greater prominence came in 1832.[7] Jackson vetoed the bill rechartering the Second Bank of the United States. As chairman of the Ways and Means Committee and chief administration leader in the Hou